Lawrence Rotarians have been giving dictionaries to students in thirteen Lawrence schools over the past few weeks. At a cost of over $6000, the dictionaries go to students in the third grade. Rotarians bring the books to the classrooms, invite the students to write their names in their new books and look together at what these dictionaries contain. In addition to words and definitions, the books include historical, geographical and other information. Teachers have encouraged Rotarians in this activity!

Wow, it has been months since I have done a Wheel. I am completely out of practice and my notes from the meeting look alarmingly copious. In a sadistic new development, instead of the Berube brothers singing we will be assigning that task to whomsoever is the last to arrive. This distinction fell to Joe Giordano and Jose Cruz this week. Our two friends did what they could with the situation but I can't help thinking that this strategy, clearly meant to discourage tardiness, could backfire. I'm imagining that if one is at any risk whatever of being late the choice will be made to basically bag the whole meeting rather than to be late and sing. I can say, unequivocally as far as I am concerned, the singing is not going to happen.

We were all very happy to officially welcome new member Jonathan Machado to the club. Jon is in banking and his sponsor is Lee. He is expected to be involved with Rotaract which is a sort of subset of Rotary aimed at Rotaract which is a sort of subset of Rotary aimed at getting younger members together.

For the record, I've never heard of Rotaract till today, nor have I heard of Elderact (the goal of which is, I trust, self-evident). There was also talk of satellite clubs and vision sessions--again never heard of them. There are a lot of new things developing in Rotary it would appear. (Of course, the alternate interpretation--that I am either too self-absorbed or too downright oblivious to be aware of things that have been happening all along but don't involve me directly--is impossible to countenance, so this stuff must all be new. Right???)